Robbins Farm Garden

A Cooperative Learning Project

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Tomatoes – how we doin’ this year?

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July 26, 2015

July 23, 2016

July 22, 2017

July 21, 2018

What’s different in 2018?

  • Regular fertilizing per instructions (Espoma TomatoTone)
  • Hay mulch vs red plastic
  • Less pruning – only suckers below the first fruit set, and allowing multiple leaders. Also by hand, not with a clipper
  • Early spray with copper fungicide (Bonide)
  • Some new varieties
  • Pretty good weather

Curing your garlic harvest

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You’ve harvested bunches of lovely garlic…now what? How do you prepare them for storage?

This from Karen Chrisman, Master Gardener (http://www.wmassmastergardeners.org/0708.html):

“CURING Brush the dirt off the plants and bulbs and lay them on a screen or a flat basket in a warm, dry spot with good air circulation, such as a well-ventilated room or covered porch. Most sources recommend shade for this. Curing is complete after three to four weeks when the skins are dry and the necks (stems) are tight.

The dry tops and roots can be cut off. If you further clean the bulbs by removing the outer skins, be careful not to expose any cloves. Although hardneck varieties are more common in the north, growing some softneck garlic gives you a chance to make a hanging braid, created the same way a French braid is done with hair. Braiding is easier before the stems are completely dry.

STORING Only store well cured bulbs. Garlic stores nicely under a wide range of temperatures, but produces sprouts more quickly at or above 40 degrees F. Mature bulbs store best at 32 degrees F with low humidity. Cloves should keep for six to seven months; I usually have garlic right through the following harvest.”

We grow Georgian Crystal and Russian Red, both hardneck varieties.

First Saturday of July

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The first Saturday in July ushered in our first major harvest of beets, eggplant, peppers, potatoes and zucchini. The tomatoes aren’t far behind!

Starting Squash Seeds in Sterile vs. Non-sterile Soil

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We’ve been starting our cucurbit (squash family) seeds indoors under lights to get a leg up on the season for a few years. Last year, we noticed that the germination rate for these seeds was unusually poor. This was brought into painful focus when only 1 of 33 of our Baby Bear pumpkin seeds germinated. A clue presented itself when we noticed that this pumpkin variety was the only one of our cucurbit seeds that was offered as treated seed.

Following our notes from last year, we started all our cucurbits in sterile soil this year. The results are now in, and they are striking. The one-to-one comparisons are shown in the table below. Each of the varieties shown were grown under the same conditions from the same seed from the same source for that year (2017 for non-sterile and 2018 for sterile).

[It’s important to note that we start most of our indoor seeds in sterile soil. In fact, we sterilize compost and make our own soil mix using coir, sand, vermiculite, wood ash and organic fertilizer. However, we decided to risk the non-sterile mix for the cucurbits because we start them just 2 weeks before they’re planted in the garden and they seem like such robust seeds.]

On average for all the cucurbit seed, the germination rate went from 53% for non-sterile soil to 94% for sterile soil. As for the pumpkins, we opted for the treated seed this year… and the germination rate went from 3% to 83%.